Inevitable
by dysprositos
Summary: Tony knew he would disappoint her. It was an inevitability. That was what he did to everyone, always. He didn't mean to, but he did it so consistently, so persistently, so fantastically, that he might as well have made that his goal. So he knew he would disappoint her. All he needed was time.


I set out to write something happy. But I've been in kind of a funk lately, so this happened instead. This is **not **happy.

Thanks to my beta, irite, for reading the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe timeline to make sure I was at least reasonably close in my timeframe.

I do not own the Avengers.

* * *

Tony didn't think it was fair that this kept happening to him.

The first time that he'd had a nuclear weapon in his arms and was streaking towards almost certain death, and Pepper hadn't answered her phone, he had never asked why. He hadn't thought to. It had ended up being irrelevant, the happy ending erasing the near-tragedy of unspoken goodbyes.

It had actually been pretty convenient. But somehow, Tony didn't think was going to happen this time around.

So he listened to the sound of JARVIS trying to connect the call, and he looked at her picture on the display in front of his eyes, and he thought about all the different ways he had fucked up over the last year, how he had taken something beautiful and crushed it. Exactly like he destroyed everything good, everything worth having.

It wasn't that he tried to be an asshole, he didn't _try _to be so selfish, so stupid. It just happened, and he was left with jagged, broken pieces and the unwavering certainty that whatever had happened was his fault, even as the exact details of what had gone wrong escaped him.

_Damn _him, that he could be so supposedly "brilliant" and still screw up so badly doing something that humanity had been doing since the evolution of the race. And not only could he screw it up, he did it _naturally_, _intrinsically_, like he was wired completely backwards from every other person on the planet, thereby assuring that he could never truly connect with anyone.

But that wasn't important, not now. Now, the only thing that mattered was that he was once again streaking towards certain death. Well, standing next to it, really, but he wasn't going to get away. He'd lingered too long trying to disarm the bomb, and now he had maybe 10 seconds to get moving.

He'd tried to place the first call 5 minutes ago, when he'd realized exactly how fucked he was, but Pepper was, once again, not answering her damn phone.

This time, though, he at least knew why.

* * *

Tony _knew _he would disappoint her. It was an inevitability. That was what he did to everyone, always. He didn't mean to, but he did it so consistently, so persistently, so fantastically, that he might as well have made that his goal.

At least then, he wouldn't be such a fucking _failure_.

He knew he would disappoint her. All he needed was time.

So after the battle at Stark Expo, after their kiss, after their first night together, he had warned her. "I'm no good for you, Pep."

She'd laughed that exasperated laugh she had, the one that told him that she thought he was being ridiculous, or intentionally difficult, or particularly adolescent. "You're not even going to try, Tony? That's not like you."

It was true. He didn't give up easily, and he certainly never gave up without trying. And if this was really what she wanted, well, he couldn't deny her anything.

Really...it was what he wanted, too.

So they set out on their adventure, learning, loving, laughing, living.

Pepper's optimism and Tony's dedication to never leaving a project unfinished carried them through a lot. But it wasn't enough.

Tony knew he would disappoint her. All he'd needed was time.

* * *

The break-up, months after the Chitauri invasion, had been very ugly and very public.

Most things involving Tony Stark were public. He'd been on magazine covers since he was a kid, and he hadn't had a private minute in his life since. Everything he did was splashed everywhere, always. It was something that he had come to expect, hell, it was something he had come to embrace.

Pepper, though, hadn't been prepared for it. She was a savvy businesswoman, she was strong, and capable, but she hadn't been raised in that kind of environment. It didn't help that, when everything had come crashing down, it had toppled directly on top of her.

_It wasn't fair_, Tony thought. _ She didn't deserve any of this_.

Especially since he'd been the one to ruin it, to the one to fuck everything up. Just like he always was. It was inevitable, and he didn't know why he still expected positive results, because they never came.

Tony _thought _he'd been making progress. Maturing. Growing up. Learning to act like an adult, at least some of the time. He thought that he was ready for an adult relationship, with respect, and rules, and a strong undercurrent of true, passionate love.

He had been wrong.

When it came down to why, exactly, he had been photographed gallivanting in the nude with three women, also nude, the best he could come up with was, "It was just for fun, Pep."

And when the sex tape was leaked online, well, that had just been for fun, too.

Pepper, amazingly, was not particularly interested in that kind of fun. She told Tony that she expected monogamy. She expected him to at least _try_, like they'd agreed.

And he did. He really, _really _did.

When almost the exact same thing had happened only three months after the first time, she had been less forgiving. She had put her foot down when it happened again 5 months later. He'd lasted eight months, after that, but by then she was done.

_Done_.

Tony didn't know if it was because she had grown tired of him failing at being in a relationship, failing to understand _why_ and _how _he was hurting her ("What the hell is _wrong _with you, Tony?" she had shrieked at him before dissolving into tears), or if perhaps his latest escapades had finally humiliated her enough that leaving him was the only way she could save a shred of her self-respect.

He didn't know which was worse.

Still, it might have been okay. Sure, the relationship was over, but it wasn't the first time in the history of the world that two people had ended their commitment to each other. Even under those kinds of ugly circumstances, it wasn't unheard of for some kind of reconciliation to occur. Tony knew that he had hurt Pepper deeply, but he thought that someday, they might at least be able to be friends.

That wasn't going to happen, though.

The night Pepper walked out of his life, he'd been called upon to take care of some "business" with the other Avengers. What should have been a fairly routine inspection of a suspected terrorist camp had gone sideways pretty much from the second the op began. He'd ended up crushed under half a building with a broken leg and a chunk of rebar through his liver, and a few ideas on improvements he needed to make to the suit's design ASAP.

The terrorists had been taken care of, though, and he'd been rushed to surgery to have his tibia put back into place and to see if the doctors could do something about the whole being-impaled thing.

The surgery had apparently been a success, because he woke up wrapped in what felt like a metric ton of bandages and had a cast on his leg that was comparable in size and weight to the RMS Titanic.

He had also been alone.

Hospitals have this funny thing called 'confidentiality,' but it sometimes didn't work out quite the way it was supposed to. In this instance, that meant that someone blabbed to the media that _the _Tony Stark was currently laid up with some pretty awful injuries, and that his longtime PA and more-recent significant other, Pepper Potts, was nowhere to be found.

Somehow, that small bit of truth got twisted, and soon the 'official' story was that Pepper had left him because she couldn't handle the danger he was always in. In fact, she had done so immediately before he had gone into surgery, leaving him alone and helpless and in pain.

Tony thought the pathos angle was a bit much.

No one else seemed to realize how ridiculous it was, though, and the backlash against Pepper was...stunning. Tony, spectacularly stoned on morphine, hadn't been aware of the media storm until almost three days after his injury. By the time he was awake and aware enough to make a statement, his words were lost in the crushing din of the voices calling for Pepper's blood.

Because Tony Stark was a _hero_, damn it! He was an American icon! And he was putting himself in danger for _all _of us! What was wrong with that _selfish bitch_ that she couldn't see that? That _whore_ had clearly only been after Mr. Stark's money, she had him wrapped around her little finger, had been taking advantage of him for _years_.

It was vicious and ugly. Most of it, Tony thought, didn't make any goddamn sense, but that had never been known to stop this sort of thing.

It made him sick, because _he_ had been the 'selfish bitch,' _he_ had been the 'whore,' and yet Pepper was taking the abuse from the public. She was being vilified for something that was completely false, had been turned into a pariah for something that she _never _would have done.

And there was nothing he could do about it. He tried. But his numerous attempts at clearing her name were explained away with the condescending assertion that he was still hopelessly in love with 'that bitch,' and he would do anything to get her back.

His side of the story never made it to the public.

Within a week, Pepper had resigned her position at Stark Industries. A week after that, she had disappeared entirely.

Tony knew he could have found her. But he wanted to give her space. She deserved that. Being with him had destroyed her, and she needed to recover. He wasn't going to push her. He just hoped that someday, _she_ would come back to _him._

* * *

The days turned into weeks, and the weeks into months. But she never came back.

* * *

_She probably changed her number_, Tony thought, as JARVIS apologized for being unable to connect the call.

Well, that was okay. It was probably better. He didn't know what he would say. 'Hey, sorry about that whole thing that happened. I tried to stand up for you, tried to get everyone off your back, but no one would listen. Oh, and I'm about to die. How have you been?'

He didn't think that would be an especially useful conversation.

It didn't change the fact that right now, in this moment, Pepper was the only thing he wanted.

But he couldn't have her. He had fucked up, and now he'd never get a chance to make it right. That stung more than the knowledge of his impending death.

He felt the explosion more than he heard it, a wave of pressure and heat that sent him flying. If he had taken off sooner, he might have made it, but he was too close. Flying debris from the explosion smashed into him, taking out his flight stabilizers. The blast wave threw him upwards. As he somersaulted towards the sky, he looked down and estimated his free-fall distance to be a little more than three hundred feet. So, about four seconds.

It was both the longest and shortest four seconds of his life, an infinity compressed into two heartbeats.

As he fell, his eyes never left Pepper's image on the screen in front of him.

* * *

This is a little different from what I usually do. Please review and let me know how it went.


End file.
